


Into the Dark

by darlingargents



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Canon-Typical Pennywise, Canon-Typical Violence, Getting Together... Slowly, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22381102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: This time, Richie is going to save Eddie. (Except, in Derry, it’s never that simple.)Or: an ever-changing time loop, a complicated task, and What You Don’t Know Can Definitely Hurt You.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 35
Kudos: 525
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019





	Into the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).



> Fic title and titles for individual parts from the song I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab for Cutie. Thank you to Z for the beta!

part i — no blinding light or tunnels to gates of white

Richie refreshes the carving on the bridge, and starts to cry as he does so. His hands are shaking as he digs the knife into the soft, weather-worn wood, but he manages to form the letters into recognizable shapes. He feels thirteen again — awkward, self-hating, and desperately in love with a stupid, asthmatic, hysterical, fanny-pack-wearing, brave boy.

He knew, then, that he’d never have Eddie — and now he won’t just never have him. Eddie is dead and gone and Richie will never see him again.

Standing, his knees creaking — they definitely didn’t do that last time he was here — he tucks the knife into his front pocket and heads back to his rental car. _If we left, when we first decided, would he be alive now? In New York, far away, but still breathing?_

Richie supposes he’ll never know. What-ifs will kill you.

(Except, it turns out, in Derry. Most things will kill you, but apparently not that.

Because nothing is ever that fucking simple.)

❖❖❖

Richie goes to sleep on the plane home, and wakes up with his phone in his hand, his stomach violently emptying itself over a balcony. Mike’s tinny voice emanates from his phone, asking him if he’s okay, if he’s still there — if he’s coming back to Derry.

Steve, his manager, is half-frantic, talking to him, and he can’t hear a word of it through the buzzing in his ears. He’d be calling this a very vivid dream, but he can taste the bile in his throat, feel the hot air in his lungs. His palm hurts for the first time since it was cut with a coke-bottle and a promise.

It’s four days previous, and Eddie is still alive. Richie’s heart begins to pound in his ears, almost frantic with terror and, incredibly, excitement. Eddie’s still alive, and Richie can keep him that way. He’ll do that, no matter what.

This time, he’s not terrified, flooded with memories — he’s had days to process, he’s faced his demons. He asks for two extra minutes, drinks mouthwash along with the tic-tacs, and a quick shot of bourbon to steady his hands and nerves. He doesn’t freeze up onstage this time.

He’s going home and he’s going to fix it. He’s going to fix everything.

❖❖❖

Maybe it’s his imagination, but Eddie seems a bit different this time around. He’s still his usual hypochondriac self, but he seems more reserved, a bit less aggressive. He doesn’t talk about his marriage at all around the dinner table, dodging the question when it gets asked. Otherwise, things go pretty much the same — they all start to remember at once, they get the message about Stan, and Mike gives the table a beating (and the restaurant staff a heart attack.) Richie doesn’t yell at the little kid this time, and takes a selfie with him. (He’s not _always_ an asshole to fans. Makes a point to avoid it, even.)

This time, though, he doesn’t let Bev stop him and Eddie from leaving. He ignores her creepy dream-visions and takes Eddie’s hand, pulling him out the front door of the Derry Town House. “Is that your car?” he asks, knowing that the answer is yes, that Eddie drove here. Eddie told him last time; this time, he notices the crumpled passenger-side bumper and New York plates.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, distracted by trying to fit his luggage in the back. “Just put your stuff here, I can drive you to the airport—”

“Sure, man.” He helps lift Eddie’s biggest suitcase, ignoring Eddie’s protests, and gets in the passenger side. The car he rented is a few spots over and he doesn’t look at it. He’ll pay the fine, it doesn’t matter, as long as Eddie gets out of here alive.

For a few minutes, Eddie drives in tense silence. His left leg is jittering so hard that Richie can feel it shaking the frame of the car, his fingers tapping a frantic rhythm on the steering wheel as he drives. Richie keeps trying to think of something to say to break the silence, but it feels too fragile, too uncomfortable. Once they’re out, out and alive, he can think of something.

They’re coming up to the Derry town limits when there’s an ear-splittingly loud screech of metal on metal. Something in the car’s engine _crunches_ , and for a moment, Richie has a sense memory of Eddie holding his broken arm in the Neibolt house as Pennywise advanced on him.

The sound of Eddie slamming on the brakes is audible from the passenger seat. The car shudders, the engine makes another horrific noise, and they don’t slow down in the slightest.

“Shit,” Eddie says, the blood draining out of his face. “Shit, _shit—_ ”

He shifts into neutral and back out, and tries to steer — and they start to spin. Eddie can’t get control and Richie is frozen in his seat.

 _Why_ , he thinks, _why am I here again if I can’t fix this—_

The high beams flash against the _Leaving Derry_ sign, and Richie sees a red balloon float up from behind it, a hyper-realistic smiling face on it. Eddie sees it too — Richie can see him out of the corner of his eye, hyperventilating, and he turns to Richie. “Richie, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry—”

And then the car smashes into the side of the Kissing Bridge at sixty miles per hour where, twenty-seven years ago, Richie carved his love for Eddie into the wood. There’s no chance of survival. They break through and go down into the roaring waters below.

Richie closes his eyes and _hopes—_

❖❖❖

Richie’s phone is ringing. _Derry, Maine_.

“It’s Mike, from Derry.”

“I’m on my way,” he says, and hangs up. He doesn’t need to throw up this time; that’s nice. He asks for bourbon anyway. Steve gets it for him, perplexed.

“Who was that?” he asks as Richie drinks the bourbon in one go.

“Old friend,” he says. “I have to go home.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Good news?”

“No.” He stands and makes his way to the wings. Thirty seconds. “The worst.”

“I’m so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

His name is called, and he pastes on his brightest grin. His mouth tastes like bourbon and blood and, somewhere in the back of his mind, he can see the smouldering car wreck in the Kenduskeag where some version of him was laid to rest.

❖❖❖

So he can’t _leave_ Derry. Good to know. What he needs to do, then, is to save Eddie in the final battle.

The dinner goes pretty much the same, again; this time he stops Mike from smashing in the table. Anything he can change to make things better might help. Except this time, they don’t all say they’re going to leave. He doesn’t, and Eddie doesn’t, and Ben looks concerned, but doesn’t make any actions towards leaving Derry. Mike and Bill go off together, and the rest of them converge at the Derry Town House.

Richie listens to what Bev says about her dreams, drinks along with the rest of them, and in the morning they head to the clubhouse. He doesn’t do the Pennywise voice from the shadows — it was funny, sure, but a part of him thinks that maybe, just maybe, if he’s nicer this time, Eddie will be okay. It makes no sense, but part of him really believes it.

He goes through the motions. Collects the token, meets Pennywise again. It goes the same as the first time, which makes him think that, however fucked up this may seem, it’s probably not Pennywise doing it. It’s not Its style, anyway. It goes for the nightmares; this is a deeper horror than that.

Richie gets back to the Town House around the same time as last time, and Eddie’s already there, and not covered in mud or whatever like he was the first time.

“I need to talk to you,” he says to Richie, eyes downcast, and Richie frowns. He’s… not being himself. He’s not even really being the version of himself that he becomes when he’s really scared or freaked out. Richie doesn’t recognize this version of Eddie.

“Sure, man,” he says. He follows Eddie up the stairs. Eddie’s jaw is tight and he’s muttering something about push and pull doors as he heads into his room. The door to his bathroom is open, and Richie glances at it and thinks, _oh, shit, Henry_.

“I need to take a leak,” he says, and pushes past Eddie into the bathroom. He closes the door, rips the towel-rail out of the wall with a rain of plaster, and pulls open the shower curtain.

Henry’s knife misses his face by maybe an inch. The fucker is _fast_. Richie slams the towel-rail down on his head and he falls back into the tile wall, the switchblade clattering to the ground. Richie kicks it away and it hits the wall, the point sticking into the baseboard.

There’s a pounding on the door. “What the fuck, Richie,” Eddie shouts, “let me in, you goddamn asshole.”

Henry doesn’t look like he’s going to be moving in the next few moments — there’s a trickle of blood running down his temple, and the blow from the towel rail was immediately followed by hitting the wall. So Richie turns his back and opens the door for Eddie, who looks _pissed_.

“Did you kill someone in my fucking bathroom, dude?” he says, and then he sees the switchblade in the wall. “What the fuck — oh my god, Henry Bowers.”

“He didn’t age well,” Richie says. “I think we should leave.”

“Good idea.” Eddie’s still staring at Henry. The trickle of blood is still dripping down on his lips and collar. “I’ll call the others.”

Eddie leaves, and Richie stares at Henry for a long moment before following.

❖❖❖

There’s a flurry of horrified activity when Eddie tells the others, in a detached, clinical voice, that Henry was hiding in his bathroom. Bev goes white as a sheet (Richie wonders, vaguely, if one of her visions of their deaths involved Henry) and calls the police as the rest of them prepare to head to the library. Richie remembers, too late, that Pennywise is going to kill the kid from the restaurant. He can’t stop that, now.

It all goes by in a blur from then on. Pennywise attacks at Neibolt, and this time Eddie has the guts to kill the spider-Stan before it eats Richie’s face. They make their way to Pennywise’s lair, go through the whole ritual that doesn’t work, and Richie and Eddie end up in front of the closet doors. (This time, Richie has a moment to wonder if Pennywise chose closet doors as intentional symbolism, just to twist the knife a little more — or if it was just a coincidence.)

Eddie doesn’t talk about it — he goes straight for Scary, before Richie can even say anything. Inside is the pomeranian, and Eddie slams the door on it without a word.

“It was definitely a monster,” he says when Richie gives him a look.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Richie says, and goes for Very Scary. Betty Ripsom’s legs dance out of the darkness yet again. No surprises there.

There’s a ground-shaking roar from the main chamber, and Eddie grabs his hand and pulls him back out. Richie wonders, vaguely, what would’ve been behind the third door.

He’s not paying attention, which, as it turns out, is the worst thing he could’ve done.

Eddie throws the monster-killing stick at Pennywise, and one of Its thrashing limbs goes straight through Richie’s chest and stomach.

He starts to fall, almost too shocked to feel the pain. _No, this isn’t how it was supposed to happen—_

Eddie screams, an incoherent sound of pure rage, and grabs Richie as he collapses against the cave wall. His insides are falling out; this must’ve been exactly what Eddie felt as he died, Richie realizes. There’s bright white light flaring on the edges of his vision.

“No,” Eddie gasps, “no, fuck, Richie—”

“Sorry, buddy,” Richie says, trying for light, but Eddie’s frantic hands hit the wrong thing and his vision whites out for a moment. “Oh, fuck—”  
“ _No_ ,” Eddie says. “No, this isn’t going to happen. Next time, I swear, Richie, I’ll fix it, I’ll find a way—”

“What?” Eddie’s words make no sense; is this what dying feels like when it’s not instant? You start hearing things? The pain is overwhelming; Richie breathes through his nose, trying to control it until he wakes up backstage at the show.

“I was supposed to fix it, I tried to fix it, but I didn’t do it right, I didn’t know how, I’m sorry—”

“Eddie—” There’s another flare of pain and Richie has to close his eyes against it before he can finish his sentence. He has no idea what he was going to say, anyway.

Then the others are crowding around him, and he realizes — they don’t know how to kill It. “Guys,” he says, a bit of blood running down his chin as he speaks, “you need to fucking — insult It. Make It small. That’s how you can kill It.”

Eddie had been frantically trying to staunch the flow of bleeding, and he stops, staring at Richie. “How did you—”

“Just do it. You fucking pathetic clown!” he shouts in Pennywise’s general direction, and there’s another cave-shattering roar.

“Richie—”

“Eddie, I fucked your mom,” he says, and laughs. It hurts worse than anything else so far, and he ends up groaning and doubling over, trying to make the pain stop.

“This isn’t—”

“Go help them,” Richie says, and weakly tries to push Eddie away. The others are off defeating the clown and they need all the help they can get.

“How did you _know_?” Eddie says, and Richie sighs, closing his eyes.

“I’ve done this before,” he says. It’s not like Eddie will remember it. “Except last time it was you. Figures that I’d get myself killed trying to fix things.”

“Wait — Richie, seriously, are you fucking with me?”

“No, dude, Jesus, I’m on my deathbed. It’s fine, I’m going to wake up when Mike calls me.”

“Me too.”

Everything starts to go dark, and Richie grapples for consciousness. He’s only awake long enough, really, to process Eddie’s words.

“See you then, I guess,” he says, and feels his exposed heart stop beating.

❖❖❖

part ii — If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks

Myra is talking, her voice high-pitched and hysterical, and a call from Derry, Maine is displaying on the dashboard of Eddie’s car. He hasn’t crashed his car (or called Myra his mother) since the first time, but he’s still so shocked that he thinks, if he’s not careful, it’ll happen again this time.

_See you then, I guess._

Richie is looping, too — but he’s trying to fix _Eddie’s_ death. They’re trying to save each other.

“Love you,” he says and accepts Mike’s call. He notices the red light and makes sure he’s braking before he starts talking. “Hey, Mike. Do you have Richie’s number?”

“Uh.” Eddie’s never answered like this before; he supposes it’s a reasonable guess that Mike isn’t in this time loop or whatever it is. “Do you know why I’m calling?”

“Have you called him yet?”

“No—“

“When you do, give him my number, I need to talk to him. That asshole.”

“So… you’re coming back?”

“Yep. See you soon.” He hangs up and waits.

Fifteen minutes later, when he’s parked near his apartment, his phone rings again, a California number. He accepts the call. “Eddie Kaspbrak speaking.”

“What the fuck, dude.”

Eddie laughs, and for a moment, he feels like he can’t stop. He’s not alone in this — whatever the fuck it is. Groundhog day bullshit. “Glad you’re alive.”

“Me too. Fuck, that hurt. Guess that happened to you as well. Sorry, man, I get it now.”

“Well… no. It keeps happening to _you_.”

There’s a startled pause. “Wait, what?”

“You got impaled. And died. And I’m trying to fix it.”

“Wait a second.” There’s a shuffling sound, like he’s moving quickly with his phone against his face, and he calls out “Steve, give me five, seriously.” A moment later, he’s back. “So — you’re saying that I died? Not you?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s… weird. Because the first time I did this — before time got all fucked up — _you_ definitely died.”

“What?”

“Are we just going to keep going in circles, here? I think we must have come from different timelines. Or something. We saw each other die and we need to figure out how to keep us both alive.”

“Okay.” None of this makes sense, but — well. This is some ancient magical bullshit, and they’re fighting a shapeshifting clown; things not making sense is pretty much to be expected. “So, how do we do that?”

“Fuck if I know, dude.” Richie laughs. “I need to be onstage, like, yesterday, so I should go, but — I guess I’ll see you in Derry.”

“See you.” Eddie hangs up, and spends a minute sitting in his car before he gets out and goes to pack.

❖❖❖

Eddie calls Richie again on the way to Derry.

“So,” he says as soon as Richie picks up, “I guess you remember the time we tried to leave and crashed, right?”

“Right.”

“We shouldn’t try that again, then? What about staying away from Derry?”

“Look, Eds, I see your point, but we barely defeated Pennywise when six of us were there. If it’s just four, they’re fucked. And even if we live, I don’t think I could live with myself if I let them all die.”

“Fair enough.” Eddie knows he’s right, and he wouldn’t have considered it, not really, but—

He can still feel Richie’s blood on his hands. When he closes his eyes, he can see the broken pieces of his rib cage sticking out, the mess of gore that was once a functioning torso.

Richie’s right, but Eddie doesn’t think he can watch him die again.

“You’re still coming, right?”  
“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, my flight’s about to take off and the flight attendant is giving me a look, so I should go. Bye.”

Richie hangs up, and Eddie’s audiobook comes back on. He pauses it, and drives in silence down the highway.

❖❖❖

There’s another rental car in the parking lot when Eddie gets there, and he pauses to look at it. A small, practical sedan. It doesn’t seem like the kind of car that any of the others would’ve rented, and he doubts there are many other tourists at the restaurant tonight. He notes it, and goes into the restaurant, not flagging down the waitress this time. He’s done with that. He has more important things to do.

He steps into the private room, and stops in his tracks.

Stan is sitting at the table.

His sleeves are rolled up, there’s a glass of water in front of him, and he’s smiling fondly at Bill and Mike, who are both standing and chatting.

“Holy shit,” he says, and they all notice him at once. Bill comes over and hugs him, and he hugs back, mechanical; he can’t stop staring at Stan.

Stan looks back at him, calmly, as if daring him to speak, and Eddie is hit with the horrifying realization that it’s not just him and Richie.

Stan is in the loop, too. And he killed himself twice more before deciding to come back.

“How’s it going, man?” Bill asks, grinning at him, and Eddie looks away from Stan, forcing a smile onto his face.

“Better now that I’m with you guys,” he says, and it hurts how true it is.

He sits down and texts Richie under the table; he doesn’t know if he’ll see it in time, but he figures Richie deserves a warning. _Stan’s here._

Richie responds a moment later; he must’ve just parked and checked his phone. _Wait, what? Are you serious?_

_He’s here. Totally alive._

_Oh, fuck. Coming in now._

Eddie puts his phone back in his pocket and takes a sip of his water. His mouth suddenly feels very dry.

Richie, Bev, and Ben come in together, and Richie hits the gong again, but there’s no humour in his face; he’s staring at Stan, too. Eddie notices with a twinge of horror that there’s a ring of scars around the edge of his face. He remembers them from the couple of years before Stan left Derry, but he’d assumed, somehow, that they would’ve faded by now.

(Maybe they just came back, he thinks, and pushes away the thought. It was bad enough that his hand grew a scar; he can’t imagine how it would’ve felt for his reflection to change.)

The meal goes just about the same, except without the conspicuous absence of Stan. Eddie finds himself getting into it a lot more this time, and he thinks Richie might be as well. He realizes, about halfway through, that there had been a weight on his chest from Stan’s death; knowing that there’s a way for all seven of them to get out of this alive, even if they haven’t found it yet, is more comforting than he expected.

When they finally get to the topic of why they’re all back, and open their fortune cookies, they spell out: YOU WON’T GET OUT OF DERRY ALIVE.

“Wow, subtle,” Eddie says, under his breath, and Stan snickers. The others — the ones not in on it — are staring in horror at the words.

The cookies break open and all hell breaks loose.

❖❖❖

It’s different, this time, with Stan here.

There’s more of them on the side of staying than leaving — it’s really only Ben, and he stops when he sees how much the others are committed to staying. They all go back to the Town House, Mike explains what they need to do, and Bev tells them, unprompted, about her dreams — about how they have to stay, because they have no chance of surviving otherwise. It’s enough to seal the deal: the Losers are all together, and they’re going to win this time.

(Eddie hopes that they’re going to win. He hopes desperately. He doesn’t want to do this over and over, a million more times.)

They break to go to bed, and, without discussion, Richie grabs Stan’s arm and pulls him into Eddie’s room. Eddie follows, bemused. He throws Stan down on the bed and Stan looks back at him, arms crossed.

“So,” Richie says, trying and failing to look intimidating. “You decided to join us?”

“Apparently. So, how many of you usually die? Or is it all of you?”

“Just one,” Eddie says. “Apparently, it’s either me or him.”

“Interesting.” Stan sighs. “Look, I’m here, okay? It didn’t work to take myself off the board, but I’m here now, and I don’t have to make my wife find my body again, so I think it’s a good thing. I’ll see you in the morning.” He pushes past Richie into the hallway and the door clicks closed behind him.

Now that they’re alone and in the same room, Eddie doesn’t even know what to say. There’s a million things he could say, that he wants to say, but he doesn’t even know where to start.

Richie rubs a hand across his face, and yawns. “I should probably go to bed—”

“Wait—”

Richie turns around, his hand on the door handle. “Yeah, Eds? What’s up?”

There’s nothing to say. He’s not — he needs to think first, and make a logical decision, here—

“I’m going to leave Myra. I mean. When we get out of this.”

“Oh.” Richie blinks at him. “Well, good for you, buddy. Or not? Should I be congratulating you, or—”

“Congratulations is fine.” Somehow he feels like a ton of weight has been lifted off his shoulders. “Coming back here and watching you die — well, it’s made me reassess things.”

“Great.” There’s something a little odd in Richie’s voice, and Eddie wants to find it, press it, figure out what it is. “I’m having some revelations, myself. Night, Eddie.”

“Night. Thanks for not being an asshole for once.” Richie’s halfway out the door as Eddie speaks, and he laughs a little too loud in the hallway. Eddie laughs too, just a bit.

It takes him far too long to fall asleep.

❖❖❖

The meeting in the clubhouse has a different feeling this time. It’s more hopeful — all of them being there has an impact on them all. Stan finds his shower caps and smiles, the ghost of his thirteen-year-old self in his eyes.

This time, though, maybe Pennywise is scared. Outside the clubhouse, Mike tells them to wander around Derry and find their tokens and memories, when a cackle sounds from deep in the woods, echoing all around them. Eddie looks straight at Richie, who looks just as startled as the rest of them.

There’s a whistling sound, like a tea kettle boiling over, and something explodes in the centre of their circle.

Eddie’s thrown to the ground, his ears ringing. A warbling, single-note scream goes on and on, and he realizes his body is covered in something wet. He forces his eyes open, watches the forest spin like a top around him, and looks around.

There’s blood everywhere, like a swimming pool full of it was dropped in the clearing. It’s soaking into the ground, into all of their clothes, all over the trees, and Bev is screaming. She’s staring down at her hands, seeing something the others can’t. Ben tries to help her and she stumbles to her feet, trying to run and falling, still too dizzy.

Pennywise cackles again, and around them, hundreds of balloons rise out of the forest. They blot out the sun, turning the very air red around them. Bev’s scream cuts off abruptly and she clutches at her throat, sobbing.

“Get out of Derry now, Losers! Maybe you’ll get to live! Or maybe I’ll find you…”

The balloons pop all at once, and bright red confetti rains down around them. Eddie reaches for a piece of it with blood dripping off his hand. It’s shaped like a clown face, and as he watches, it transforms into the leper for just a moment, and winks.

❖❖❖

Eddie’s been content to let Mike mislead them so far, but this, he’s pretty sure, is the point where his patience ends. From Richie’s expression as they gather together, wiping blood off their faces, he thinks he’s not alone.

“We’re not splitting up or finding our tokens,” Richie says before Mike can try an inspiring speech. “Fuck that. Listen — me and Eddie have done this before.”

“What?” Mike’s gaze bounces between the two of them, shocked. “I don’t—”

“We’re stuck in some bullshit Groundhog Day simulation. Your ritual doesn’t work. There’s a better idea. Let’s go back to the Town House.” Richie turns around and starts walking back towards town. Mike stares openly as he walks away, and Bill looks at Eddie, questions in his eyes.

“Let’s go,” Eddie says.

❖❖❖

The benefit of getting to the Town House earlier this time is that there’s no Henry in Eddie’s shower. He can rinse off the blood — he’s shocked that it really didn’t bother him that much — and get dressed without being stabbed by an escaped insane asylum patient. (What a story that would’ve been, if he’d gotten to escape Derry even once.) They meet in the lounge, and when Eddie gets down there, Bill is already pouring everyone a drink.

Ben and Bev come in after Eddie, and Mike shows up a few minutes later, since he had to drive home to get cleaned up. They drink in silence for a few moments, and Eddie can feel Richie’s nervousness, just by sitting next to him on the couch.

“So,” Eddie says when the silence has stretched on too long, “we’ve done this before.”

“The ritual—” Mike starts.

“Didn’t work,” Richie says, downing the dregs of his bourbon and standing up for a refill. “Sorry, Mike. Nothing to do with belief. The clown doesn’t work like that.”

“Usually, Stan isn’t here,” Eddie says.

Four sets of eyes land on Stan, and he looks down. “I took myself off the board,” he says quietly. He’s barely touched his drink. “Apparently it didn’t work.”

“And when it’s the six of us, one of us dies,” Richie says. He’s still standing, and he tops up his glass again. “Me or Eddie, it seems.” Something in the way he says Eddie’s name makes Eddie look at him, and he hides his face behind his glass as he drinks. Eddie wants to pull off his glasses and look at his eyes — not now.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “What does work, though—”

“I’m sorry, how are you three in on this? What happened?” Ben puts down his glass and gestures wildly. “How are you travelling in time?”

Richie shrugs. “It’s Derry. I don’t think we should question it.”

“F-fair,” Bill says, and smiles humorlessly, eyes downcast.

“Anyway,” Eddie says, “we can defeat It by believing It’s small. Believe that we can kill It, and we can.”

“So it _does_ run on belief?” Mike asks.

“Sort of. It doesn’t make much sense.” Eddie shrugs. “But that’s how we can kill It.”

There’s a moment of silence while they all process, and then Bill says, “Let’s go.”

No discussion. They finish their drinks, and go.

❖❖❖

They pack their weapons, as strong as their minds can make them. Eddie takes the monster-killing stick offered by Bev with a smile and shoves it into his belt. They’re armed to the teeth and doing this a day early; Eddie’s cautiously optimistic.

This time, Pennywise doesn’t hold back. At Neibolt, he splits them in two groups, but instead of the Spider-Stan, Eddie and the others in that room have to deal with a flying spider-like being that transforms between their fears. It grabs onto Stan’s face as the woman in the painting, and Eddie drives ten inches of steel through its body. A scream like metal scraping on concrete echoes around the room and it flops to the ground and twists like a dying fish, its features flashing between fears so quickly that it’s dizzying. It slows down, stops, and crawls out as a spider.

Stan stays where he is on the ground, nails digging into his face, breathing hard. Bill touches his shoulder, hesitant, and Stan pulls away, stands up on his own. His eyes are red, indents from his nails vivid on his skin.

“Let’s go,” he says, and stops, covering his mouth with his hand. Without warning, he turns and vomits in the corner. Richie winces and Bill reaches to touch him again before thinking better of it. Stan stays bent over, head in his hands, shaking his head back and forth.

“I can’t,” Stan says, voice shaking, “I can’t, I can’t—”

“Stan,” Eddie says, and without deciding to do so, he takes a few steps forward and lays a hand on Stan’s back. Stan tenses, but doesn’t pull away. “Look — we can kill It, okay? We’re going to live and you can leave and never come back.”

“Rock pigeon,” Stan says under his breath, “American robin, common yellowthroat, American goldfinch, royal tern—”

It’s weird, but Eddie stays there, hand on Stan’s back, letting him recite birds until he’s calmed down enough to stand up again. His eyes are still red and he wipes away a few stray tears, but he nods a thank-you at Eddie.

The others are back with them, and together, the seven of them make their way underground.

❖❖❖

Bev gets attacked again in the large chamber where they fought Pennywise last time, and all of them dive into the water to get her except Stan and Eddie. Stan is still shaky and nervous, and Eddie stays behind with him, silently by his side. They get Bev back and together, they descend deeper into the earth, into Its lair.

❖❖❖

They all know the plan — taunt It until It gets small enough to kill. Believe that It is small, nothing but a clown.

For a little while, it seems like it’s about to work. Pennywise shows up as a horrifying spider-clown hybrid, and they shout at It, over and over, until It sends them off into their own private horror-worlds. This time, Eddie and Richie are still together, facing down the closet doors.

“Fucking closets,” Richie says, and before Eddie can ask him what that’s supposed to mean, he kicks Scary and turns around.

“Let’s go—”

“Maybe if we open all of them, we’ll survive this time,” Eddie says, voice tight, and Richie pauses.

“Sure,” he says. “Why not.”

Door one. Pomeranian. Richie lets it turn into a monster before closing the door.

Door two. Betty Ripsom’s legs. Eddie slams it that time.

They face down Scary together, and Richie reaches for the handle. Eddie can see his hand shaking.

The door opens, and they fall to the ground in a park in the middle of Derry. It’s bright and sunny out, there are people everywhere, and all of them have their backs to Richie and Eddie.

Richie has gone a peculiar color, almost like old oatmeal. “No,” he says, “no, fuck no—”

“Richie! Are you ready?”

Eddie turns, and there’s Pennywise, sitting on the shoulder of the Paul Bunyan statue, a hundred balloons in one hand. It laughs, and the sound echoes around them, as every other person in the park slowly turns around.

“Time for Richie’s Dirty Little Secret! One-time performance of a lifetime! Soon you’ll both be dead, and only remembered by the nastiest, worst parts of you! You’ll drown in filth and disease, Eddie! And you, Richie—”

Richie screams, and grabs for his weapon, a hatchet from Mike’s garage. He throws it and it goes far, flying through the air and landing in Pennywise’s gut. It looks down at the hatchet, and laughs hysterically. It pulls it out, the bloodless wound stitches itself closed, and It throws the hatchet back. It lands on the ground between them, still clean.

Pennywise lifts up, the balloons carrying It into the air, and starts to sing. “ _I know your secret, your dirty little secret—_ ”

Richie screams again, falling to his knees, and Eddie has no goddamn clue what to make of this, what Pennywise could possibly be taunting him with. Pennywise laughs again and lands in front of them, the grass blackening where Its feet touch. Eddie can see the ring of Derry citizens around them, closing in, their faces blank, swaying in tune to Pennywise’s song.

“Why don’t you tell him, Richie? Why don’t you tell Eddie here just what you were always thinking when you told him—”

“ _Fuck you_!” Richie screams. He picks up the hatchet and swings it directly for Pennywise’s face. It catches it on one hand and throws it away into the distance.

“Aww, Richie, does that hurt? Do you feel ashamed? Are you afraid of what I’m going to tell your little friend here? Don’t worry, soon you’ll both be dead and you won’t ever have to see him again after you see the disgust in his eyes when I tell him—”

“You stupid fucking clown! You pathetic asshole loser child-killing _clown_!” Pennywise flinches back, shocked, and Richie spits in Its face.

The ground spins beneath them and they land hard on the cave floor, in front of the open closet door. Distantly, Eddie can hear faint singing until Richie kicks the door closed.

“Fuck that clown,” he says, breathing hard, and stands. “Let’s go.”

Eddie has about a million questions, but that’s for later, after they win. He follows Richie.

❖❖❖

Eddie doesn’t know what happens next. It’s a million sounds and colors and flashes of horrible things in his vision, maybe real and maybe not. He thinks It is dying, that they’re doing _something_ , but It won’t go down without taking them too.

The cave begins to collapse, and they realize, almost as one, that they aren’t going to make it out.

The seven of them join hands in a circle, without discussion; they wait, bloody and bruised and pained, and watch the rocks fall around them until they can’t anymore.

Eddie keeps his hand in Richie’s until a boulder falls between them, breaking the bones and pulling them apart. For the last moments of this version of his life, Eddie reaches across the space between them, and hopes.

❖❖❖

part iii — just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark

Eddie’s arm fucking hurts.

There’s beeping in the background, the smell of antiseptic and cleaning supplies, a smell that still comforts him as an adult. He opens his eyes, and bites back a scream.

He’s in a hospital bed. He’s thirteen years old. His mother is sitting on a chair next to his bed and knitting, humming quietly to herself.

Eddie can hear his heartbeat monitor speeding up and his throat feels like it’s closing. He scrambles for his inhaler, and his mother looks up.

“Eddie-bear! You’re awake — oh, sweetie, here.” She takes his inhaler out of her pocket — _her_ pocket, why the hell was it in there? — and shoves it into his mouth. It clacks hard against his teeth and he winces as she readjusts it. She pushes the button down and he breathes in the fake medicine that somehow works.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says as his breathing and heartbeat calm down. “Does it hurt?” She runs a hand over his forehead. It’s cold and clammy and not comforting in the slightest. Eddie runs his tongue over his teeth, feeling the slime of fake medicine, and nods.

It really does. He hadn’t thought about it years, but that broken arm had really fucking hurt, and he’d killed an evil clown with it.

“I’ll get you some morphine,” she says softly. “I promise, I’ll make you better.”

What follows is a fifteen-minute shouting match with the nurse. Sonia’s hands are tight little fists on the strap of her purse, her face red with fury, as she shouts about her precious little boy, about how he’s in _pain_ , can’t you see he’s _hurting_ , can’t you see he needs to be _better_ , you bitch—

Eddie mouths apologies behind her back as the nurse nods and shuts her down over and over. Eventually Sonia runs out of steam and allows the nurse to give Eddie a Tylenol. He swallows it down with a glass of lukewarm orange juice and tries not to look at her as he does so. Something in her eyes scares him.

(It’s strange. His mother’s been dead for years; he would’ve thought he’d be happy to see her again. But all he can feel is a creeping dread in his stomach.)

“We’re going home today,” she says. “Aren’t you excited, Eddie?”

“Mm-hm.”

❖❖❖

Eddie remembers this bit — the amount of wheedling it took to convince her that if he leaves, he won’t immediately run back to those nasty friends of his. Yes, he’ll just go to the pharmacy and get an inhaler. No, he won’t go see Bill. Or Richie. Or Stan. Or — he tries not to think about the words she uses for Mike and Bev and Ben.

Eventually, though, she lets him go, and he goes through the motions again, letting Gretta vandalize his cast. He doesn’t know what’s happening, why he’s here, but he doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s not — not the child version of Eddie.

He wonders if any of the others are back as well. Richie and Stan, at least, if not the rest. It would be nice to know he’s not alone.

Eddie doesn’t want to just go home after the pharmacy. He’s far enough removed that going back to that house and his mother’s smothering version of love isn’t even a false comfort. So he walks through town a bit, considers where he might find a pen to fix his cast.

He walks until he sees the arcade, and remembers — Richie’s token was from there. Maybe he was at the arcade during this week.

The Bowers gang is at the end of the street and Eddie would really rather avoid them this time around, so he ducks in the entrance on the park side, and there he is. Richie, still short and round-faced, playing Street Fighter with a boy he doesn’t recognize. Eddie hangs back for a moment, considering how to approach, when the game beeps loudly and Richie and the boy both lean back.

“You’re freaking good, man,” the boy says, grinning at Richie and they high-five, their hands touching for just a moment too long. There’s something about it that sets Eddie’s teeth on edge.

“I gotta go,” the boy says, and turns. Richie pulls out a token.

“Wait,” he says, and his voice is almost desperate. “Play again?”

The Bowers gang step in the other side, and Eddie feels something cold in the base of his stomach. He ducks behind the photo booth — somehow, he’s sure it would be very bad if he were seen now.

“I’m not your _boyfriend_ ,” the boy says, loudly, and Eddie can feel Richie’s terror, despite not even looking at him. “You didn’t tell me this town was full of little fairies,” the boy says, and a million thoughts start to connect in Eddie’s head. _Your dirty little secret—_

“Richie fucking Tozier?” Henry Bowers says, incredulous, and Eddie doesn’t need to hear any more. He runs.

He’s out in the park, the strangely familiar park, when Richie runs out crying thirty seconds later. Eddie’s never seen him cry like this before. He shrinks into the shadows, trying to stay out of his sight line, and then Pennywise shows up. Eddie can’t see what’s happening, just how Richie is reacting to it, screaming and running and collapsing on the ground. No one else around seems to notice; typical Derry. It’s almost exactly the same as the vision in the cave.

Considering all of this, Eddie’s pretty sure that Richie hasn’t travelled back with him. Which doesn’t solve the problem of how to get back to being an adult. (He has a suspicion of why he’s here, at least.) The Tylenol is wearing off; it didn’t do much in the first place and now there are waves of throbbing pain running up and down his arm.

He tries not to think about what he saw in the arcade as he starts to walk home. He doesn’t want to theorize — it seems invasive and wrong, somehow, because he wasn’t supposed to see that, it’s Richie’s trauma, not his — but his mind keeps going back to it, and the pieces keep coming together, even though he doesn’t want them to.

He’s almost out of downtown when he hears someone calling his name. He turns around, and it’s Richie.

Eddie feels his face go flaming red. He doesn’t want it to, but he can’t stop thinking about what he saw. _Play again? I’m not your_ **_boyfriend_ ** _. Your dirty, dirty little secret._

“Eddie,” Richie says again as he catches up to him. “Hey, man, your mom let you out of the house? How’s your arm?”

“Yeah. It’s okay. Hurts.”

“I bet. Oh, fuck, who wrote that?” Richie lifts up his arm, gently, and turns it over so that LOSER shows, large and dark.

“Gretta. It doesn’t matter.” He tries to pull his arm away, and Richie holds on, reaching for his pocket.

“Wait, let me sign it.”

“No—” Eddie doesn’t want to change anything, is the main reason — and his mother would kill him if she saw Richie’s name on it — but there’s something in Richie’s eyes as he drops the cast.

“Fine.”

“I don’t want my mom to see it,” he says, and it’s mostly true. The sadness in Richie’s eyes lifts, and something inside him goes, _oh_.

“Right. Sorry.” He pauses, rocking back on his heels, hands shoved in the pockets of his ratty jeans. “It’ll be okay. Right? We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah.” Eddie doesn’t let himself think about seeing Richie’s guts spill over his hands in a cave in twenty-seven years, doesn’t think about them dying together under a million tons of rock, reaching for each other as the end came. Doesn’t think about the feeling in the pit of his stomach when Richie touched his arm, more gently than Eddie had ever seen him touch anything.

“See you later,” Richie says, and walks away.

Eddie watches him go, and lets himself think the words he’s been dancing around for so long.

_Richie is in love with me._

He’s sure, down to his bones, that it’s true.

Eddie turns to keep walking, and everything dissolves.

❖❖❖

Lights, colours, shapes — everything is spinning and Eddie’s pretty sure he would be on the verge of throwing up if he had a physical body. If this is what time travel feels like, he’s glad he hasn’t been conscious for most of it.

He lands hard on the ground, and watches his ankle bend at a very bad angle and spring back into shape without a problem. He touches it; it feels fine, but also somewhat… insubstantial.

So he gets to experience every single different form of time travel. Great. That’s just lovely. At least he seems to have his adult body back.

He’s on the Kissing Bridge, not far from the Barrens, and there’s motion out of the corner of his eye; he turns and there’s Ben, held down by the Bowers gang, a knife carving into his stomach. It’s a quick, horrifying image, and then it fades. That happened at another time.

Eddie takes a step closer to that part of the bridge, and something else fades into view. Richie, approaching, holding a pocket knife. He looks around, nervous, and drops to his knees in front of the wooden edge of the bridge.

Eddie approaches as he carves two letters into the wood. _R+E_.

How many times did Eddie bike past those letters, not knowing what they meant? How many times did Richie assume that Eddie would hate him or worse if he said how he felt? Eddie’s heart hurts as Richie gets up, puts the knife back in his pocket, and bikes away, fading out of sight.

A few seconds later, a car pulls up. Richie’s rental car. Adult Richie gets out, his eyes red, his clothes rumpled; a total mess.

He approaches the side of the bridge, where the letters Eddie saw being carved thirty seconds ago are faded and nearly gone. Richie pulls a knife out of his pocket and refreshes the carving, tears running down his cheeks as he does so.

 _This is the timeline where I died_ , Eddie thinks numbly as Richie sobs, his head leaning against the wood. A few minutes later, he staggers to his feet and gets back in the car.

He drives away, and everything starts to spin again. Eddie sees dozens of teenage couples carving in their initials, in flashes, clothing and hair changing by the decade, and then everything starts to fade.

He wakes up in his car, a call from Derry, Maine displaying on the screen.

❖❖❖

part iv — son, fear is the heart of love

“Who the fuck are you?”

Richie’s head is spinning, and he doesn’t register the words for a few moments. When he does, he lifts his head, and looks into the eyes of his thirteen-year-old self.

“Oh, fuck no.” He stumbles to his feet, and looks around. He’s in the Barrens, overheating in his ripped and bloody leather jacket, and his younger self is right there, looking at him. _Fuck_. What the fuck is going on?

“Why are you here? Seriously, dude, who are you?”

“Don’t worry about it.” His head is spinning badly. Richie makes his way to a tree and grabs onto it to hold himself upright. The urge to vomit comes and goes; he squeezes his eyes shut and breathes through his nose.

“You’re standing right over our clubhouse!”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”

“You showed up out of nowhere. Are you Pennywise?”

“ _Fuck_ no.” The nausea is fading; Richie feels okay enough to stand fully upright and turn around. God, he was an annoying little fuck, wasn’t he?

He tries to remember what happened. They couldn’t kill Pennywise, they all died, and — now what? He got sent back to the fucking eighties to hang out with his middle-school self? No God could come up with a punishment this cruel. But it doesn’t seem like Pennywise’s type of mind-fuckery, either.

“So… why are you here?” His younger self — what can he even think of him as? Richard? Tozier? He’ll go with Richard, he would’ve hated that at thirteen — crosses his arms and glares. “How do you know who Pennywise is?”

Richie looks his younger self up and down for a moment. God, those stupid Hawaiian shirts that he wore every day. “I grew up here. Of course I know about that fucking clown.”

Richard grins. “That fucking clown. Do I know you? Do you live here?”

“Not anymore, thank god. But I’m back here anyway. Funny how that happens.” He glances at his watch, and winces. The hands are spinning, round and round, rapidly. It’s almost dizzying to look at. He takes it off and shoves it in his pocket. “Tell me the date.”

“What?”

“The date. The year. The whole thing. Pretend I’m a time traveler.”

Richard gives him a look that Richie recognizes. His younger self thinks he’s insane. Not surprising. “August 15th, 1989. Are you a time traveler?”

So they’ve already defeated Pennywise. Ish. Good to know. Bev is gone, the others are slowly drifting apart. And his younger self, the kid in front of him, is spiralling ever-deeper into self-hatred and shame.

“Maybe. I’d like to figure out how to get home, at least.”

“Where’s home?”

 _Well, 2016_. “Not here.”

Richard gives him another look. A _seriously, dude?_ look. “That’s not helpful.”

“I know.” Richie pulls off his jacket, and Richard sees the bloodstains. The blood drains out of his face, and he stumbles back.

“Uh, I have to go—”

“It’s my blood.” Richie lifts his shirt, shows him the healing wounds. He’s not sure when they healed, but time is all kinds of fucked up right now. There’s really no way to know. “I didn’t kill anyone. Promise.”

“A lot of people are killing kids,” Richard says. His hands are doing something that Richie still does when he’s stressed, fidgeting like he’s about to do jazz hands and burst into performance. He did it a lot more back then. “Why should I believe you?”

Richie drops the jacket and sits down in the shade under a tree. God, it’s hot. “I don’t know. Because you can.”

Richard stares at him. His nervous fidgeting slows; the color comes back to his face. “Do I know you?”

There’s a lot of questions that he needs to answer before he can answer that, Richie thinks. Is this real? Is he changing things? What is he supposed to do here, in conversation with his younger self? He’s pretty sure the time loop was to save all the Losers — they haven’t succeeded yet, so why is he here, now? What does he need to fix?

He’s never been good at this kind of problem-solving. He’s also not very good at lying to himself, as much as he might try to do it.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you know me. Sort of.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” He sounds scornful, but Richard’s curiosity is piqued. He sits down across the small clearing, his bare legs stuck out in front of him.

“I’m… you, I guess.”

“Me?” Richard stares at him, and then looks him over. “Wait — you’re me? From the future?”

“Yeah.”

“Whoa. Why are you here? What’s it like being an adult? Are you married to a supermodel? Are you famous?”

“Don’t know. My back hurts a lot. Not married. Sort of famous, I guess.”

“Huh.” Richard seems to have skipped the disbelief part of this; he’s openly staring in excitement. “Are there flying cars in the future?”

Of all the things he could tell his younger self, the rise of technology doesn’t even make the list. “Nope. Sorry.”

“Is there anything you could tell me?”

Richie has heard those questions, of course. _What would you tell your younger self, if you could? What did you need to hear when you were a teenager?_ Of course he knows what he needed to hear. He’s thought about it a lot, all those times he asked himself why he’s an adult in the twentieth century who has an entire public persona built around a fiction of heterosexuality. It’s 2016, people are gay, get over it; he knows that, of course he does. He donates to pride societies and has a couple of bits about supporting his gay friends or whatever. He doesn’t care that people around him are out and proud, aside from the small, hidden part of him that wishes that he could be, too.

The thing is, the part of him that’s always going to be thirteen years old believes, wholeheartedly, that being gay will kill him. That it’ll cause him to lose everything he holds dear. His friends will reject him, his career will vanish overnight, and he’ll be beaten to death in an alleyway for daring to think about kissing a man.

So maybe that’s why he’s here. To fix that broken piece of his brain that’s fucked up his life for the last twenty-plus years.

It’s a lot of responsibility. He feels like his throat is closing up even thinking about it. (Is this what Eddie feels like all the time?) He’s not some wise gay mentor.

He still feels like this kid that he’s looking at right now, who makes fun of his friends to hide the fact that he can’t stop thinking about them naked, who’s terrified to ever touch another boy.

_Fuck._

“Uh… dude?” Richard waves a hand in front of Richie’s face. “Are you awake? What the fuck. If you can’t tell me anything, I get it, the space-time continuum should be preserved or whatever.”

“No, I’m just… figuring out what to say.” Richie clears his throat and looks down at the dried blood all over his torn shirt. He remembers how they died, now — falling rocks. God, that’s an awful way to die.

“Listen,” he says. “You should know… there’s nothing wrong with you.”

Richard laughs, but he seems almost uncomfortable for the first time since he accepted who Richie is. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with me. Is this reverse psychology? Am I going to get sick or something?”

“No. I mean. There’s nothing wrong with — with you, and your — fuck, I don’t know how to do this. You’re gay.”

It’s the first time Richie’s ever said it. Sure, he’s technically addressing another version of himself instead of saying it about himself, but it’s close enough. He’s so caught up in the feelings of delight and fear that he almost misses Richard’s expression. He’s gone pale, eyes wide under his glasses, and he’s moved away, his back against a tree, trembling.

“I…” Richard says, and then, horrifyingly, he starts to cry.

“Jesus fuck — kid, no, stop it—” Richie has absolutely no fucking clue what to do with this. Not a clue. He’s never dealt with kids before. And especially not himself. He reaches out, realizes how much worse that will make it, and pulls away. “Kid. It’s not — it’s not a bad thing?” He shouldn’t have phrased it as a question. “Fuck. Look. In the future, things are better, okay? You can get married. To a man. You can hold hands with your boyfriend in public. And it doesn’t make you sick or disgusting or dangerous, okay?” Applied to himself, Richie doesn’t believe a word of what he’s saying. But to this crying kid in front of him? He believes it. Wholeheartedly.

Maybe that’s why he’s here. If he can get it through his head that he and that kid are one and the same, maybe he’ll have a wonderful gay breakthrough. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Richard’s tears are drying up. He pulls off his glasses and wipes his eyes with his shirt, and he slowly puts them back on and blinks at Richie. “Are you… are you sure?” he says, his voice small and broken, and Richie’s heart hurts for him.

“Yeah, man,” he says. “Really. You don’t have to believe me now, but… really. There’s nothing wrong with you. And the others wouldn’t hate you if they found out.” That part is pure speculation, but it feels true, as terrified as he was only hours ago (or something — time is weird right now), when it looked like Eddie was about to find out.

Richard stands up. “I’m gonna go home,” he says, and Richie takes it in — the stupid clothes, the scrapes on his knees and elbows, the scars that he’s worn for his entire life. His younger self, who might just be going on to a different life than he had. One with a lot less fear.

“Good luck,” he says.

He watches Richard disappear into the Barrens, and closes his eyes.

He opens them backstage at the theatre, his phone ringing in his hand.

❖❖❖

part v — i will follow you into the dark

Eddie still remembers Richie’s number, and he punches it into his phone around the time Richie called him last time. Richie picks up on the first ring.

“Kaspbrak,” he says, and Eddie smiles, almost giddy.

“Tozier. Good to hear your voice.”

“The rocks really hurt, didn’t they?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a shuffling sound on the other end of the line. “Hey, I got Stan’s number from Mike. I’ll text it to you. Do you want to call him, make sure he’ll be on his way this time?”

“Yeah, sure. Good luck on your show.”

“Thanks, man.” He pauses. “I don’t have time for this, but — where did you go before you came back here? Did you go somewhere else or—”

“I went back to that summer,” Eddie says. “I saw—” _I saw you_. “Us. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

“Hm.” Richie sounds a little odd, but Eddie doesn’t press him. “I went back to — shit, I really need to get onstage. I’ll see you soon.”

“See you.” Richie hangs up, and a moment later Eddie’s phone buzzes with a text, an Atlanta phone number. He drives around for a bit, making sure Stan’s phone call has gone through, and then parks outside his apartment and dials.

“Stanley Uris speaking,” Stan says, calm and perfectly pleasant.

“Hey, it’s Eddie.”

“Hi, Eddie.” Stan sounds exhausted. “Yes, I’m coming.”

“Great.” Eddie pauses. “Did you… go somewhere?”

“What?”

“I mean, in between dying last time and now.”

“No,” Stan says. “I just died and came back to my living room.”

“Huh.” So it was just him and Richie. Interesting.

“Did you go somewhere?”

“Yeah. Went back to that summer for a couple hours.”

“That’s… weird.”

“None of this is normal.”

“Fair enough.” Stan sighs. “I’m booking my flight now and going to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you then.” Eddie hangs up, and braces himself to go inside and pack his bags again.

❖❖❖

This time, Eddie and Richie meet before the restaurant. They talk over the phone on their way and Eddie suggests meeting at the Kissing Bridge, and Richie is silent for so long that Eddie wonders if he’s misstepped before he says it’s fine. It’s almost five when Richie’s rental car pulls in, late afternoon shadows stretching all around. It’s a vivid sensory summer memory in Eddie’s mind.

Richie gets out of his car and Eddie remembers the image of him stumbling out of that same car in tears, recarving their initials into the bridge. It hurts his chest to think about it, makes him want to reach for his inhaler — but not in an entirely bad way.

“Nice to see you alive again, Eds,” Richie says, and holds out his hand for a fist-bump. Eddie returns it, and as their knuckles connect, he remembers the boy in the arcade, his hand touching Richie’s for just a moment too long, and every time they would touch as teenagers and Richie would pull away.

How did he not see it before? It’s like a lifetime of memories are slotting into place, suddenly making perfect sense. It’s scary, but exhilarating. He’s never felt anything like it before.

He’s… been quiet for too long. “Nice to see you, too,” he says, and Richie nods and sits down against the hood of Eddie’s car. Eddie resists the urge to tell him to get off.

“So, I met my thirteen-year-old self,” Richie says, and Eddie blinks at him.

“...Really? What was that like?”

“Oh, you know, I fixed the emotional trauma that’s destroyed my adult life and built a better future for that version of myself. I don’t remember it, so I have to assume that was an alternate timeline and that version of me did great.”

It’s sarcastic, but Eddie gets the sense that he’s not entirely off-base. “Well, that’s good,” he says, and Richie laughs, quietly.

“Yeah, I sure as hell hope so. I hope it was enough to let us kill It for real this time. So where did you go?”

“I went back to when I broke my arm,” he says. “And I — well, I saw you in the arcade.”

Richie pales so dramatically that Eddie wants to check his blood pressure on principle. “You… what?” he manages, weakly.

“You and some kid, and Henry’s gang, and then Pennywise in the park, like we saw last time in the caves.”

Richie looks like he might fall over or pass out, and Eddie considers reaching out for him before forcing himself to stop. He turns to humor — that’s how they communicate, right? “Yeah, asshole, you played Street Fighter with some random other kid while I was laid up in my house with a broken arm. Thanks for the invite.”

Richie laughs weakly and runs a hand through his hair. “Sorry, man. Uh… did you hear what they said, by any chance?”

“No,” Eddie says, and it’s the hardest and easiest lie he’s ever told.

Richie looks visibly relieved. He laughs and claps Eddie on the back, pulling his hand away quickly. No lingering touches. No eye contact.

“I’m going to drop my bags at the Town House and then we should get to the restaurant,” Richie says, and stands. “See you there?”

“See you,” Eddie says, and doesn’t move to leave until Richie is gone. He sits on the hood of his car and watches Richie drive away, and wonders what he was too afraid to say.

❖❖❖

The seven of them gathering at the restaurant feels, somehow, more powerful this time. Stan seems happier, more engaged and cheerful — the last time was awful, sure, but what you’re afraid of is almost always worse than the real thing. He’s been through it, and he can do it again, just like the rest of them.

Eddie wonders, as the conversation takes a similar path, if the others are getting any kind of deja-vu. It’s becoming almost routine for him, and for Richie, too, if he had to guess, but for the others, all he can go by is the strange expressions on their faces after saying the same thing that they’ve said every time so far.

Richie isn’t looking at him, through the entire meal. He ribs him gently about his boring job, without getting near the topic of Myra, and otherwise stays focused on the others. Eddie misses Richie’s attention. He hadn’t realized how much it meant to him, these past iterations. He finds himself talking a little louder, being a little more vulgar, just in the hopes that Richie will laugh, or even look at him, just once.

Near the end, he says something a little brutal about Richie not writing his own material, and Richie gives him a glowering look that tells him he’s gone a bit far. He looks down at the table, and when he looks up again, Stan is looking at him like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

Eddie looks away from Stan. He doesn’t like what Stan’s expression is doing.

The fortune cookies spell out, once again, YOU WON’T GET OUT OF DERRY ALIVE. Eddie hopes that this is the time it’s wrong.

❖❖❖

At the Town House that night, he and Richie go through the explanation again — they’ve done this all before, they know how to defeat It, and they can go in the morning, no need for tokens. The others react the same way, and they have a few drinks as a group before heading to bed. Eddie tries to sleep — he knows that tomorrow, of all days, he’ll need it — but he can’t get comfortable. He keeps thinking about Richie, and Richie avoiding him, and the way Richie smiled in his selfie with the little kid at the restaurant, and how Richie cried when he refreshed the carving in the timeline where Eddie died.

The worst part is, he doesn’t understand _why_.

At two in the morning, he gives up on sleep for now, and goes down to the bar. It’s still empty, so he helps himself to a drink and opens up Candy Crush on his phone.

He’s halfway through his level when he hears the stairs creaking, and looks up to see Richie descending them, rubbing his hands over his eyes. He’s only wearing pajama pants, no shirt, and Eddie’s mouth goes a little dry. He looks down at his game quickly and takes another sip of his drink.

The creaking stops, and he looks up again to see Richie stopped at the bottom of the stairs. His hair is messy, his glasses visibly smudged even from here; Eddie wants to clean them on his shirt or something.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks when Richie doesn’t say anything. Richie nods, and slowly makes his way into the lounge and pours himself a drink. He sits down across from Eddie and takes a sip.

“Look,” Eddie says when the silence becomes too overwhelming, “I know — I didn’t mean to see what I saw, okay? And I don’t think any less of you for it.”

“I know, asshole,” Richie says mechanically. He pulls off his glasses and rubs his eyes. He looks younger, without them, and Eddie’s chest hurts. He wants to smooth down the tangles in his hair, wrap him in a blanket so he doesn’t catch his death — he can see the goosebumps, and his drink with ice can’t be helping—

Eddie stops his train of thought in its tracks, horrified. What is he thinking? The feeling in his chest is unfamiliar and it’s making him desperate for the inhaler that’s on the bedside table in his room upstairs. Except somehow it’s not an unpleasant feeling.

“I heard what they said,” Eddie says, and Richie’s hands still in the middle of cleaning his glasses. (Rubbing the fronts on his pajama pants — not gonna work. Eddie has a cleaning cloth somewhere, he’ll give it to him.) “Sorry. I mean — I think I was supposed to see it. That’s why I was there.”

“Oh,” Richie says.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says helplessly.

“It’s fine.” It’s clearly not. He downs the rest of his drink and stands. “See you in the morning. Get some sleep.”

Eddie is left alone with the rest of his drink and a half-played level of Candy Crush. He closes the app and finishes his drink, slowly, wondering what the hell he’s supposed to say to make this better. He has a horrible feeling that if they can’t figure out whatever it is between them, they have zero chance of making it out alive. (And a part of him is seriously worried that this is their last chance. That if they can’t figure it out this time, with all of them here, with whatever they were supposed to get in those trips to the past, that their chances will be used up.)

He goes back to bed, and falls asleep still thinking about Richie’s tired eyes without their glasses.

❖❖❖

Mike brings them weapons again, tools from his shed and a few other things that he’s vague on how he found. Eddie recognizes one of them as the axe that Richie killed Henry with the first time around, and from Richie’s expression, he recognizes it too. The others don’t notice their reactions; Bill takes the massive axe and slings it over his back. Richie takes the hatchet again and turns it over in his hands, looking down at it.

Eddie takes his monster-killing stick and believes.

The feeling as they enter the Neibolt house, Richie’s words from the very first time echoing in all their heads, is tense. It’s the earliest they’ve ever gone, and Eddie has to hope that Pennywise is unprepared, or that they can just get lucky this time.

(He shouldn’t rely on luck, he knows. But he can’t figure out what else he can do.)

They fight off the spider-creature, and descend into the earth.

As they climb down, Eddie keeps touching the monster-killing stick, keeps asking himself what he should be doing. Asking himself what needs to change from last time — they had all seven of them, so what went wrong?

He doesn’t have time to wonder for long. When they get into the cave, Pennywise is already there, a massive spider-creature, and Richie shouts, at the top of his lungs, “ _You’re just a stupid fucking clown_!”

The fight for their lives begins again.

It begins to shrink, and lashes out, scattering them, forcing them to run. This time Eddie notices Ben and Bev running off together, and Mike and Stan, and him and Richie, and he starts to think, to wonder—

They’re trapped in front of the three doors again.

“I’m getting pretty fucking sick of these,” Richie mutters, and they go through the process again. Pomeranian. Betty Ripsom.

This time, the third door pulls them apart. _This is new_ , Eddie has time to think before he lands hard on the floor of a disused hospital. All around him are discarded syringes and sticky puddles of substances he desperately doesn’t want to think about. The smell is horrendous, and everywhere he looks there’s more and worse. Blood bags broken open and oozing across the floor, mold growing up the walls and throwing off visible spores.

A laugh echoes around him, and he looks up to see flickering fluorescent lights. A bottle falls into his lap, and he picks it up. It's about the size and shape of a bottle of cough syrup, and on the front is a skull-and-crossbones symbol for poison.

A sweet, female voice drifts out from all around him. _Drink up, Eddie, drink your medicine—_

His throat is closing up and he needs his inhaler, and he doesn’t let himself touch it. The poison bottle is growing hot in his hands, and he pulls off the cap, tossing it aside.

“Fuck you,” he says, and pours it down his throat. It’s hot and metallic, and he’s pretty sure it’s blood. He keeps drinking, and it keeps coming, and it pours down the side of his face and down his front. He sees it dripping onto the floor, already filthy and smeared with fluids; it’s dark red and shiny like an oil slick.

The bottle has more on the inside than it can actually fit, and Eddie keeps drinking. The poison feels like it’s eating him apart, and he keeps drinking, keeps going—

The bottle lightens in his hand, and a moment later, it’s empty. He throws it aside and it shatters, and he smiles.

“Fuck you,” he says out loud, and distantly, he hears a scream. “Richie,” he says, and stands, kicking aside the syringes and scalpels littering the floor. He wipes off his mouth, looks down at his hand — it looks more like oil now, shiny and black — and runs out the door, into the twisting corridors with flickering lights.

The scream comes again. “ _Richie!_ ” he shouts, and keeps running, faster and faster. The corridors blur together, and he can’t find his way out; they’re never-ending. The screams get louder and louder, and he follows them best he can.

Pennywise’s laugh echoes through the hallways, and Eddie stops for a moment. “You won’t find him,” Pennywise says, sing-song. “He’s somewhere far away, and you may have survived the poison, but you won’t see him again…”

Eddie keeps running. “Richie!” The scream is louder now, closer, and he turns a corner and sees an exit sign over a fire door. STREET FIGHTER is written across it in graffiti letters.

He runs and pushes it open, and falls hard on his side onto the grass. He squints against the sunlight and looks around.

Richie is on the ground, nails digging into the soil, sobbing, as the Derry townsfolk crowd in closer, each one holding a balloon. On each one is written a different word. _FILTHY. SINNER. HELL. DANGEROUS._

“Richie!” Eddie calls, and Richie looks up. He stops crying, shocked, as Eddie stumbles to his feet and runs the last distance to Richie, shoving the people aside. Their faces are totally blank of features, and they don’t feel quite human when Eddie touches them.

He falls to his knees in front of Richie and reaches out, covering one of his hands. Richie laughs weakly as the townsfolk crowd closer.

“What took you so long, dickhead?” he says, and Eddie suddenly knows exactly what he needs to do.

“I was busy,” he says. “But I’m here now.”

“How do we—”

Eddie kisses him.

The townsfolk freeze, their hands outstretched, and start to crumble into dust. Eddie’s hands are on either side of Richie’s face, stubble under his fingers, Richie’s breath in his mouth, and his heart is pounding so hard his chest might explode, and he’s never felt so sure of anything in his life.

He pulls away a moment later, and the park vanishes around them. They’re on their knees on the floor of the cave.

“Eddie…” Richie says, looking shellshocked. “Dude… what the fuck is in your mouth?”

Eddie laughs weakly and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I had to drink poison.”

“Gross.” Richie wipes his mouth too, some of the oil-slick coming off on his palm, and looks at Eddie closer. “Um. So—”

“Let’s go,” Eddie says, and takes his hand.

Richie squeezes it, and they run.

❖❖❖

Something is different this time, Eddie’s sure of it.

The seven of them call out insults and dodge Its flailing limbs effortlessly. Richie and Eddie both pull each other out of danger’s way at least once, and Eddie sees the others doing the same for each other. It gets smaller and smaller, and tries to bring the cave down without success.

When It is small and fragile, Mike pulls out Its heart, and as one, they crush it to dust.

❖❖❖

Without having to leave behind a body, the escape is a lot less… emotional. Eddie can remember the times that Richie died, when he had to be dragged out, not even knowing why he couldn’t bear to think of Richie staying buried under the earth in the town he hated so much.

As he climbs out, and keeps looking at Richie, and Richie keeps looking back and smiling at him… he thinks he understands, now.

❖❖❖

At the Town House, they don’t even talk about it. Mike grabs them a few bottles of liquor from the lounge, they shower off and meet in Bill’s room (the biggest, he’d mentioned.) It’s late afternoon; they sit on the floor and drink themselves stupid, laughing and talking about nothing. Eddie sits next to Richie, and he’s aware of every inch of their bodies that is touching, like there’s a live wire between them.

Eventually, it gets late, and they start to fall asleep. Bill and Mike on the bed, Stan on the desk chair, Bev and Ben on the couch. Eddie is too damn old to sleep on the floor, but he doesn’t care. He and Richie clear a space and fall asleep next to each other, just barely touching.

Eddie doesn’t dream. He doesn’t think any of them do, and that may be a first in those twenty-seven years.

❖❖❖

He wakes up, and he’s still there, on the floor of the Town House, Richie next to him. His mouth is open and he’s snoring, his glasses askew, and Eddie wants nothing more than to kiss him.

 _Is this what love feels like_ , he wonders, and it’s a big, terrifying question, but he thinks he knows the answer.

❖❖❖

part vi: epilogue

“Right after?” Eddie asks.

Richie shrugs. “Pretty much.”

Eddie crouches down and looks at the carving, runs his fingers down it. The letters of their initials are worn with age and weather, but they’re still visible.

He takes Richie’s knife, and digs it into the wood, refreshing the carving. When he steps away, he takes Richie’s hand.

“How did I never realize?” he says, and Richie laughs.

“Fuck if I know, dude. I wasn’t exactly subtle. And the number of times I wrote Richie Kaspbrak into my middle-school notebooks is honestly criminal.”

“That’s adorable.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, staring off into the distance. “Yeah, I guess so.” He pulls away from Eddie, and Eddie already misses the press of his fingers.

He gets into the passenger seat of Eddie’s car — he’s already arranged for his rental to be brought back to the airport — and buckles his seatbelt, which makes Eddie’s chest glow in pride for some stupid reason. “Where to now, Eds?” he asks.

Eddie looks out over the Barrens for a moment, and then gets into the car. “I don’t know,” he says. “But let’s get as far away from here as we can.”

“Agreed.” Eddie starts the car, and Richie takes his hand.


End file.
